Circle
by Utamate
Summary: 20 Players will be given 100,000. However, the money cannot be split by even two people. One person must take it all. Players decide who takes the money by choosing who doesn't, one at a time. If at any time they cannot agree, the money will start to drain. If they take too long, they can even lose it all. Who will be chosen to take it all? Let's play Circle.
1. Trailer

A tan skinned male stood in the middle of a dark room. The man wore a green shirt with a blue jacket. A grey scarf was wrapped around his neck. He had black shoes on and a pair of blue jeans. His black hair was presentable, but nothing too special. He looked at the camera with blue eyes and a light smile.

The room was colored mainly black, but red trap doors were littered all around the area creating three circles surrounding the male. The outer circle had twenty trap doors, each with a touch screen monitor and a red button to the right. The middle circle had five trap doors, with the same set up. Finally, only about 3 feet apart each from him, were two trap doors, except there was no monitor, simply the red button in front of them.

The male finally began to speak after the camera panned around the room, giving many looks around the room. "Greetings." The man spoke, "My name is Tristan Darren. Welcome to Circle." Tristan starts slowly walking around the room, "Here, twenty people will compete for a grand total of one hundred thousand dollars." He turned around and pointed up into the darkness. A graphic shows up in white text, a few feet off the ground, reading "$100,000". Re-adjusting his scarf, Tristan turned back to the camera. "They don't have to play a game, however. No competition decides who walks away with the money. Instead, they decide who gets the money."

Tristan continues walking, reaching the outer circle of 20 trap door set ups. He moves his hand over one of the monitors, "They simply choose who leaves with the money, by choosing who doesn't… one, by one, by one…" He slowly turns around and starts walking back towards the middle. "However, if they cannot agree. The money can be taken away." The graphic showing $100,000 suddenly turns red and quickly starts to decrease in intervals of $250, with each drop taking less than a second to occur.

"The twenty must decide quickly. The longer they take, the less there is. If in the end, they cannot decide who takes the money… No one will…" The graphic quickly fast forwards the decreasing process, reaching $0 in about one second. Tristan makes it back to the middle two trap door set ups. "Only one can take it all… It's a stressful game… Not one that everyone can complete." Tristan steps onto the trap door and reaches his hand up, "In fact, some people may even choose to walk away from it all."

He reaches for the red button in front of him and presses it. A siren blares as a red light shines from above down onto him. Tristan looks directly into the camera and smirks, "Let's play Circle." Suddenly, the trap door opens from underneath him and he falls out of frame before the camera fades to black.


	2. Introduction and Round One

Tristan Darren was once again in the middle of the room. However, this time, there were twenty people around him. Tristan looked once again at the camera. "Greetings, players. Welcome to Circle. Today, one of you could walk out with up to $100,000, only if you all can agree entirely on who it will be. Before I continue my explanation, let us introduce our twenty."

The camera panned to the twenty players one by one as Tristan Darren introduced them, "One, Mario… Two, Link… Three, Samus Aran… Four, Fox McCloud… Five, Luigi… Six, Ness… Seven, Captain Douglas Jay Falcon… Eight, Princess Peach… Nine, Princess Daisy… Ten, Princess Zelda… Eleven, Lucina… Twelve, Pit… Thirteen, Cloud Strife… Fourteen, Lady Palutena… Fifteen, Rosalina… Sixteen, Lucas… Seventeen, Popo… Eighteen, Nana… Nineteen, Ganondorf… Twenty, Marth…"

After panning to the last person, it went back to Tristan who explained the rest of the rules, "I'll explain quickly, so listen carefully. Each round, you will have sixty seconds to talk about who to eliminate. You may vote on your monitors in front of you. Once the sixty seconds run out, your vote will be locked in. We will then reveal the votes. To eliminate someone, at least half of you, rounded up, must vote for the same person. If the votes achieve that goal, that player is eliminated and we advance to the next round. If we don't have enough, we continue the round, and you can change your vote with the round ending as soon as half of the players have the same player selected. However, as soon as we continue the round after the initial minute, the money will drain."

The graphic of white text reading "$100,000" shows up again, "Every .75 seconds, two hundred fifty dollars will be removed from the money. To simplify that, one thousand dollars will be lost every three seconds. It will take five minutes to go from one hundred thousand to zero. If we reach zero, everyone is eliminated, because at that point, there's nothing left to fight for… The red buttons to the right of you can also be used to stop the round immediately, stop the money if it's draining and move us on to the next round. However, it does come at a cost. If you press that button, you also eliminate yourself from the game, walking away from the chance at the money. Over nineteen rounds, the twenty of you will be whittled down to one… The last one standing gets whatever is left at the end, if there is anything left. Are the players ready to begin?"

The room gets filled with multiple different reactions, some clapping, others cheering, a group of people answering with "Yes.", and mixes of them. Tristan nods and looks around the room, "I wish you all the best of luck. I must now ask you, who will leave empty handed? You need at least ten votes for the same person. There are twenty players in the game… Let's play Circle…"

The white text switches from reading "$100,000" to "60". Tristan starts walking out from the middle of the room and walks away from the group. As he passes by between Zelda and Lucina, Tristan yells out, "Start the clock!" The graphic starts to count down from sixty and the room explodes into talking immediately. Everyone tries to speak over each other to get everyone else's attention, but to no avail, instead starting a yelling contest.

As the timer reaches forty seconds remaining, suddenly Falcon yells out loud enough to quiet down everyone else, "Quiet!" After everyone stopped talking, he continued, "We have to go for someone. At this point, we may as well do a random vote. We have no information to go off of, so our best bet is to simply eliminate randomly."

Everyone started to put in their vote, with some people changing theirs as the thirty second mark came in. Fox looked at Falcon as he entered his vote, "You know that we can't do this each round, right?" Falcon nodded, "We all know that. As time goes on, we learn more about each other and can decide best who should take the money in the end." Fox then added, "It's not something we're all going to be able to decide easily, Falcon. All of us want it."

A beeping noise warns everyone of the last ten seconds of the round. Votes were still being changed as Falcon pointed over to Lucina. "I say we go for number eleven." Lucina looked up in surprise from his sudden targeting on her and she changes her vote while arguing back, "We've just started and you're already trying to turn everyone on each other." As she finishes her sentence, the votes get locked in and graphics on the wall show the faces of players above each person's head. Tristan walks back into the area.

"The minute's up." He looked around to see the faces on the wall, "Above you is the picture of the player you've voted to eliminate." There were a few stray faces, a Popo and a Luigi was up on the wall, but the majority of pictures showed Lucina, Falcon, and Fox. "Circle." Tristan spoke, "Do we have our ten votes?" After a few seconds of silence, the graphic showing the clock reverts back to $100,000 and suddenly turns red. Tristan sighed, "Off to a bad start. You guys need at least ten votes for the same person. Votes will now be applied as they are changed. You guys need to get going, the money will start draining. One thousand gone every three seconds… Start the clock!"

The money on the graphic starts to decrease in intervals of $250. $99,750, $99,500, $99,250, $99,000, all in three seconds. Falcon attempts to lead the group, "We've already have a good amount of votes for her, let's just take her out." Lucina speaks up, trying to convince everyone against him, "We're in round one and you've already started antagonising people. We don't know when you'll turn on everyone else."

The money reaches $95,000 within fifteen seconds of the round restarting. The faces on the wall change as the two argue on. Eventually, the wall was only a few Fox's, and mainly populated with Lucina and Falcon. Falcon continued to argue his point, "We have a minute to talk, there's twenty of us. There's no way we can find a good reason to eliminate someone in one minute." Lucina opened her mouth to speak again, but the votes locked in and a red light shined over her. The tenth person had just tapped her picture. Lucina put her head down and sighed before gasping as she falls through the trap door that opens under her feet, ejecting her from the game.

The pictures on the wall all fade and leave behind the white text, now reading "$90,500". Tristan got back in the middle of the room and spoke, "It took you just under ninety seconds in order to eliminate someone, Lucina has been voted out of the game. You guys need to speed it up, at this pace, we wouldn't make it to round twelve. There's still ninety thousand five hundred dollars in play. Will one of you leave with it… There are nineteen players remaining… Let's play Circle… Right after this…" The camera pans away from Tristan to get shots of the remaining players before fading out to go to break, leaving the next few rounds to occur when the show returns.


	3. Rounds Two and Three

The camera fades in to show Tristan back in the middle of the room. Everyone was still on their trap door, with only number eleven left unoccupied. Tristan took a quick look around before speaking, "Welcome back to Circle. We've introduced our twenty and sent one out. However, in the first round, we also sent out nine thousand five hundred dollars. With ninety thousand five hundred dollars left up for grabs and eighteen rounds to go, our players will need to decide quicker if they wish to have anyone leave with anything. Enough of me now. Let's get to them… There are nineteen players remaining… Let's play Circle…"

Tristan starts walking away from the center and passes between Samus and Fox before once again yelling, "Start the clock!" The graphic reading "$90,500" is replaced with another graphic reading "60" which starts counting down. Falcon once again attempts to take the reigns, "Let's move down the line and keep it organized, everyone. Number twelve."

Pit looked to his left to see who was in the next positions, Cloud, Palutena, Rosalina, and so on. He speaks calmly, "That would mean you guys are next. Don't allow that." Falcon butts in once again, "Alright, we'll go random then. How's fourteen?" Pit immediately speaks up, his voice losing some calmness, "Absolutely not! I'm not listening to what you have to say and I'm not letting you target her!" Palutena looks over to Pit, "Calm down… We have time."

Everyone was inputting votes, sometimes changing them as the 30 second mark hit. Eventually, Mario gave input of his own, "Mind telling us a bit about yourself, Falcon?" Falcon shook his head, looking back at the Italian, "I've got nothing I need to tell you." Mario's reply was instant, "Why do you want the money?" "None of your business." Falcon answers, getting back a "Why should you have it if we don't know what you'll do with it?"

The final ten seconds come as votes continue to change. Falcon looks around at his opponents, "Why should any of us be given it? We don't know what anyone wants the money for but ourselves." Mario spoke up in response, "I work in plumbing, I want to upgrade the company. There's my reason."

The votes finally locked in and the graphic showing the timer now at "0" reverted back to "$90,500". The votes all revealed themselves, it was clear that Falcon was the main decision, but unsure if enough people agreed. There were a few votes for Palutena and Pit, but Falcon was definitely the popular vote. Tristan spoke up from outside the outer circle, "Circle, do we have our ten?"

After a few seconds of waiting, a red light shined on Falcon. He shook his head silently at everybody and fell silently as the trap door opened under him. Trap door number seven was now left without a player. Tristan smiled lightly and re-entered the Circle, "The money is safe this round. We need someone to lead the bunch, however, it appears that Falcon was not what you all had in mind. We have ninety thousand five hundred dollars remaining… Eighteen players remaining… Let's play Circle!"

Tristan leaves the Circle once again and the sixty second timer starts back up. This time, Peach is the one to break the silence first, "I'm wanting to host a large party for the Mushroom Kingdom. The money would be a great help to making it all happen." Zelda gave her input in as well, "I'm hoping for some new guards for Hyrule." After a few seconds of silence, the 30 second point hits.

Ness speaks up for the first time during the game, "Pit… Last round, you were really defensive when Palutena was targeted. Do you know her?" Pit nods and looks at her, "Yes. I'm a servant to her." Ness nods and looks around, "I can tell that it's not just you and her that know each other. Some others just have that look, but I can't be sure. I'm pretty sure that numbers seventeen and eighteen know each other. They look just alike." Popo and Nana, the two filling those two slots, looked at each other. The final ten seconds started to count down as final votes were coming in. The room stayed silent during that time before the votes locked in.

The votes were revealed above everyone and it was a complete mess. It was obvious that the group had no idea who to eliminate. Tristan looked at the votes and sighed, "Well, I don't really need to ask. However, Circle. With eighteen players, we need nine votes to the same person to eliminate them. Do we have those votes?"

The graphic changed back to its white text reading "$90,500". After a few seconds, the text turned red and Tristan continued to talk. "You need nine votes for the same person to eliminate them, or you can press the button and call it quits. The money will start draining now. You have slightly over four minutes and thirty seconds left. Start the clock."

The money started to drain once again and about a second later, Tristan yelled out, "Ninety thousand dollars." Popo and Nana talked quietly to each other and after their conversation that went on for about five seconds, they both changed their vote to Peach. Samus spoke up while the money continued to drain, now at about eighty seven thousand dollars. "I'm sorry, Peach, but I don't believe the money should go to a party."

Peach attempted to defend herself, but votes changed quickly and suddenly locked in. A red light shined on Peach and she whined, "Unfair…" The trap door underneath her suddenly open and she yelled as she fell down. The graphic turned back white, now reading "$86,250". Tristan came back into the Circle. "First round, everybody talked for too long. This round, it felt like nobody was talking. You guys need to get a system going. We're losing money fast. It appears that you're all deciding based on what each person wants to do with the cash. We'll see how far it goes. This is our fourth round… There are seventeen players remaining… Let's play Circle… after another break."


End file.
